


Silent Retreat

by sheldrake



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Beer, Bisexuality, Drinking, Episode Tag, Episode: S09E04 Magnum Opus Part 2, Family, Friendship, Gen, Sexuality, pubs, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 13:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5250068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheldrake/pseuds/sheldrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Problems with words. And Lewis and Hathaway in a beer garden again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Retreat

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after the Season 9 two-part episode Magnum Opus. Spoilers for that episode and Season 9 generally.

The Thames flowed steadily under the pale stone arches of the bridge, and the conversation meandered along with it, making its leisurely way from James’s spat with his sister to the likelihood of travel broadening the mind. It glanced off the subject of James’s father without really touching it, and then circled, inevitably, back to the case.

“Funny lot, all round.” Robbie sipped his beer. “All that mysticism and whatnot. I can’t help feeling it’s just… overthinking things.”

James looked at him sideways. He was the only person Robbie knew who could smile with the corners of his mouth turned down.

“That’s very you, Robbie.”

“Is it?” He smiled. “No, but come on though, that one was a bit strange, even for Oxford.”

“Even for us, you mean.”

“Throw that club into the mix -- what was it called?”

“Blue Rondo.”

“The Blue Rondo… I’d never even heard of it, had you?”

James wrinkled his nose, squinting at the late afternoon sun. “Don’t really go clubbing much these days.”

“Only in the line of duty, eh?” 

“Well, you can’t say this job isn’t varied.”

“Ha.” Robbie went back to his pint. The smoke from James’s cigarette drifted skyward, and a girl coming round to collect glasses pointedly took an ashtray from an unoccupied table and put it down on theirs. James did not react, other than to reach over and flick the disintegrating end of his cigarette into the ashtray as though it had been there all along. Robbie never had worked out how much of this sort of thing was deliberate on James’s part, or even conscious.

“That couple, though,” Robbie said. “The Kinnesons.”

“Mm?”

“I don’t know, still can’t quite get my head round it... D’you think he made a habit of it -- you know, running out on his wife to go and pick people up?”

“Well, I doubt he frequented the Blue Rondo for its guest ales,” James said, and touched the bottom of his glass gently against Robbie’s before taking a swig. “But I mean, who knows? Maybe she did, too. ‘Somehow we made it work’, he said. Not really any of our business now, is it?”

“No, no, you’re right.” Robbie nodded absently. “Mind you, when he said that, I just thought he meant, you know -- because he was bisexual.”

James looked up, sharp as a hawk. “Yeah, but then that wouldn’t really make sense, would it? ‘Somehow we made it work’.”

“Wouldn’t it?”

“No. You don’t have to make bisexuality work. It goes on its own.”

“Er...” Robbie stopped and tried to think, but James was staring at him now, blank and unwavering; it put him off. Somewhere along the line, this conversation had become disconnected. “I don’t know, I suppose I just assumed it was all part of the same thing.” 

“Nope.” James looked away, tipped up his glass, and drained the last of the lager.

Robbie had the sense, familiar from the early days of their working relationship, that he was walking through some impenetrable wood of words, with James always two steps ahead of him, laying traps. It didn’t happen so much now, but it still left him oddly dispirited. Whatever it was they’d spent the last decade or so building up between them felt suddenly flimsy and insubstantial, constructed on shifting sands.

“Well, I’m sorry if I didn’t think it through in that much depth, James,” he said, irritably. “It wasn’t exactly relevant to the case, and if you remember, we were trying to prevent a murder at the time.”

“Apparent murder, actually attempted suicide.”

“All right, save it for the official report... but you get my point.”

James shrugged and looked into his empty glass. “Well, whatever, maybe that’s how it was for them. No idea, really -- people are complicated.”

Robbie grimaced. “Aye, well. You don’t need to tell me that.”

“Not sure why you’re asking me, anyway -- I hardly qualify as a relationship expert. I just like accuracy. Do you think we could drop this, please?”

“Of course.”

But James was fiddling with the cigarette packet, tapping it repeatedly on the table. It was clear that nothing had been dropped just yet. Robbie thought about going to the bar -- another drink couldn’t hurt. Might help to smooth things over.

“Thing is, Robbie,” James said to the cigarettes. “You’re a brilliant detective.”

“Er, thanks? I think.”

“Well, you are. But it’s… like you get to a certain point, you solve the case, and then you just stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Making connections.” He looked over at Robbie, and away again. Then he put the cigarettes down flat on the table, a movement as clear and precise as a full-stop.

“Might help if you didn’t talk in riddles the whole time,” Robbie said mildly, and stood up. Sometimes, with James, you just had to decide not to be offended. “Same again?”

“Sure. Sorry.” James met his eye as he held out the empty glass. Good, Robbie thought. Any structural damage probably not irreversible.

He came back with a peace-offering along with the drinks. “Catch,” he said, and threw the bag of crisps to James across the table. “They’ve only got fancy brands here. Hope you like chardonnay vinegar.”

“I insist on it,” James said, and smiled quickly. “Won’t drink any other kind.”

A second pint was rarely ever a bad idea, Robbie thought. The topic of the New Zealand trip came up again, and James returned to making insinuating references to hobbits, a new pastime Robbie put up with because it seemed to make James happy. He sighed.

“You know she’s done spreadsheets, Laura? Multiple spreadsheets. She’s got it all worked out.”

“Very sensible. I appreciate good planning.”

Robbie looked at him. “Er, since when?” 

James shrugged. “Thought I might take it up.”

Robbie laughed. “Couldn’t do any harm.” 

A light breeze blew in and set the table umbrellas flapping. On the river, a hire-boat chugged gently past on its way to Abingdon. It would be perfectly fine, Robbie thought, to say nothing more now of any weight, to leave the difficult subjects well alone. Nobody would blame him, or mind. But then again, neither of them had ever been very good at letting things go.

“I wasn’t trying to be, you know, judgemental, earlier.” He looked cautiously at James. 

“No, I know.” James flipped the lid of the cigarette packet and drew one out with the ease of long practice. He lit it, turning his face out of the wind, and took a first drag, exhaling with a sigh.

“Not of them, or you, or anybody really. So, I’m sorry if it sounded like that. You know I’m not… well, you know me.”

“I have a vague idea of who you are, yes.”

“And maybe I don’t get on with words quite the way you do. But I mean well.”

“False modesty, Robbie -- stop it.”

He smiled. “Nah… just know who I am, that’s all.”

“Mm.” James frowned. “Always kind of envied that about you.”

Robbie said nothing. He looked across at the quietly moving water and waited.

“It’s like with Dad.” James’s voice stopped, then carried on, flat and steady as the river. “When I think about him, it’s always in the past tense -- that’s terrible, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s understandable.”

“Maybe, but he’s not in the past, is he? He’s still present. In a way.”

“Yes.”

“There’s all this stuff in my flat. Books and photos and things, from years ago. And suddenly I’ve got all these questions I want to ask -- but it’s too late now, isn’t it? He can’t answer them.” He shifted his position on the chair. “I don’t know, maybe I’ve never actually known the real him. Maybe he didn’t either. Maybe there’s no such thing as the real anyone.” 

He leaned his elbow on the table, long fingers rubbing absently against the back of his head. His right arm was flung out to one side, draped over the back of the chair; the cigarette, half forgotten, slowly consumed itself. 

“I seem,” James said, “to be having some trouble making sense of things.”

If James ever laid traps for anyone, Robbie realised, it was for himself. It had been, all along. Oh daft lad, he thought. What are we going to do with you?

“Maybe,” he said gently, “you’re trying a bit too hard.” 

“Mm.” Silence. “Always a possibility.” 

“Is that what this retreat thing’s all about, then? Or are you really just trying to shut your sister up for a couple of days?”

James smiled. “No, not really -- people who try that tend to regret it. I don’t know. There’s this idea that speaking gets in the way, sometimes. And thinking… all of that. Words. I suppose I thought it might be restful.”

Robbie considered the difficulty of it all. How to know yourself and make yourself known. To communicate the things you felt, and the things you understood to be true. “Well,” he said. “Sounds a bit dull to me, if I’m honest. But each to his own, eh.”

James sat, apparently lost in thought. “Live and let live,” he said eventually. His face was as sombre as the grave.

“Horses for courses,” Robbie offered.

“There you go, you see?” James smiled, sly. “You’re great with words.”

“And you’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one day.”

“Too clever by half, you mean?” James turned to him, amused, his face pale in the sunshine. 

Robbie shook his head. “Nah. Never known you to do anything by halves. Speaking of which…” He looked pointedly at his empty pint-glass. “Your round, I believe. Come on, I’m in no hurry to get home -- Laura’s book club’ll be knee-deep in Sauvignon Blanc and entirely non-literary gossip by now.”

James hesitated, looked at his watch. “Yeah, okay. Why not?” He levered himself upright, limbs unfolding one by one. Getting out of a chair occasionally made him look like a baby giraffe, Robbie thought -- but it was a thought he kept to himself.

“Same again?” James said.

The summer afternoon had faded into evening while they drank -- the light changing so subtly it was barely noticeable. And yet, there it was. Time passed, and nothing ever stayed in the same place for very long. James stood over him, waiting for an answer, a glass in each hand like a hugely out-of-proportion pair of weighing scales.

“Yeah, go on,” Robbie said. “Same again.”


End file.
